


The Guardian

by enbybewild666



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Cats, Demons, Gen, Insomnia, Night Terrors, Non-binary pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25012975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enbybewild666/pseuds/enbybewild666
Summary: Every night, our demons await us. Every night, the power of 5 kg fluffy ball of purring murder saves us from them. It doesn't have to be real to be true.





	The Guardian

03:01 

The dull red glow of those inanimate numbers seemed to glare accusingly out into the night. It was a threat; it was a warning. The body in the bed next to the clock rolled away, eyes dry, the sides of their head pulsing with the crushing tightness of exhaustion, the muscles in their back tense and shoulders rigid. They drew themselves into a ball as they lay on their side, attempting, futilely, to hide. Next to them, in a chair layered with blankets and atop a solitary pillow, the suggestion of a shadow that was a cat slept on, content, oblivious, murmuring soft tiny mrps and legs twitching minutely as she dreamed little kitty dreams.

03:02 

The corners of the room seemed to grow darker, the walls drawing closer together, motionless; an unnameable dread grew palpable in the gloom. The twitching paws of the dreaming cat stilled, as the quiet of the night languidly became a silence filled with noiseless screams and unspoken horror; as it had the night before, and the night before that. The body in the bed turned only their eyes outward to face the thing that was coming, and if they were less exhausted, less afraid, they would have opened their mouth and shrieked from the very bottom of their lungs. But they knew by now that it would have done more harm than doing nothing at all. 

03:03 

The cat awoke truly with a series of urgent, closed-mouth trills; the corners of the room rushed inwards like the maw of a great ravenous predator, eager for warm living prey. The cat leapt forward in one great bound to stand between the body in the bed and the body rapidly forming from those shadows, back arched, tail puffed, afraid, protective, angry; she did not hiss. Instead, a wail of pure rage seemed to rubble out from her stomach, through her lungs, pouring out her mouth like a waterfall of rusting gears. It seemed as though she had pulled the rage of armies through the Earth and into the gloom of the night; the noise was a sword to those before it, and a shield to those behind it. The body in the gloom - or the gloom itself made manifest - shrunk slightly away from the outraged cat with the malicious, wounded disgust of a devourer denied, and pulsed lividly without moving. The silence seemed to grow tighter, like a person standing on the precipice of a cliff; the cat's wail pitched itself lower, a more urgent threat. The stand-off between the gloom and the cat seemed as it would last until the end of time.

03:06 

With no warning, the room was abruptly and simply a room once again, with only the slowly quieting wail of the cat and the stink of terror from the body in the bed as evidence that anything had happened at all.

The cat's tail slowly smoothed out, her back straightening, relaxing. She twitched one tattered ear alertly, large green eyes gleaming in the ordinary dark. The frozen body in the bed urgently sucked their first breath in minutes in through their nose, tears leaking from the corners of their eyes. No matter how many times this has happened before, and would happen again, the fear never grew less paralysing. The cat licked her paw, once, twice, thrice, and sauntered quietly over to the body. She lay her warm furry body against the shuddering shoulder, and leaned her head against theirs; she licked their tear-stained cheek. 

They had survived another night.

**Author's Note:**

> I was tired and awake at 3 am and feeling allegorical. I wrote this in under an hour. I love cats and I firmly believe that my love for mine has saved me in a way I cannot define. All of the cats in my life have enriched it with their small paws, sharp claws, and shameless desire to cuddle me for more treats. This is in no way edited and I'm posting it at 4 am


End file.
